Projected Strong Could be Innately Weak

Here’s wishing all our readers a very very happy 2015!

The busyness of the holiday season kept us away from the blog last month. We sincerely hope this won’t happen again.

So without much ado, here is 2015’s first blog post BY PRIYANKA:

Remember all those faces you may have written off as EGOISTIC, STUBBORN, SELF-CENTERED, RUDE, DIFFICULT or INACCESSIBLE! Ever wondered how these people actually are in their personal lives, say, with their family or friends (that is if they have any)?

I have always had a knack for striking a chord with apparently difficult people, people you can’t imagine being friends with because you attributed one or more of the above mentioned traits to them. The more I get to know such people, the more it underscores my belief that seemingly strong people are actually weaker than we realize. It is actually the extremely emotional lot of people that like to present themselves as difficult (and all the other adjectives I cited earlier) to the external world, and more so, to themselves. They want others to believe that they don’t give a dime about anybody’s emotions and are super focused on their own goals and ambitions. My belief (based on my friendship and general interaction with these people) is that they think expressing emotions is a sign of weakness and would mar their image of being strong-headed achievers and hardcore decision makers. Therefore, they choose to present themselves as emotionless freaks (and outright jerks), who know their field of expertise inside out and pretend that’s all they care about. The truth however is that since they cannot hide their emotions if someone gets close to them, they rather choose to hide behind their emotions.

My luck with such morons never runs out and God, it seems, kind of chooses to parcel a myriad of them to me one after another. Each parcel tagged with a note that states, “If you open me, you’ve got to mend me!” Every time my intuition tells me not to open it or else I will be stuck again in another emotional tumult, I eventually end up opening it and…Boom! The vicious cycle of me becoming friends with them begins, which involves getting to the root of their psychological imbalance, trying to sort their mental dilemma and eventually ending up getting a kick on my back.

Not so long ago, my previous boss (I am a big admirer of his intellect, vision and thought process in professional matters) and I had the following conversation during my interview for an internal transfer within the same organization:

BOSS: “Since you are just back from your maternity leave, hope you do not need to go home during lunch to feed your baby as he is already about 5 months old now!”

ME: “You have kids, right?” (I was so annoyed with him!)

BOSS: “Yes, two.”

ME: “Hope your wife fed them long enough since you once mentioned she is a housewife?”

BOSS: “Oh yes, for 2 years!”

ME: “ Believe me, a working mother loves her child as much if not more than a housewife.”

And that was it - I had earned my lunch breaks then and there. Obviously, I always made up for the loss of working hours by working late nights from home and ensuring my deadlines are not affected. But I had instantaneously made an impact on this man. He immediately knew that he could not suppress me unduly and perhaps that was what he was looking for, someone who could challenge him. I immediately got the role I was being interviewed for - BD and Sales Manager. He and I got along well for a good one-year. I delivered as per his expectations, ensured that the team got along well with him and became a communication channel between him and his superiors, until recently, when I got that kick on my back (once again!), which inevitably happens towards the end of the vicious cycle (I mentioned above). I was thereafter transferred to another role and another reporting manager.

Coming back to the topic of this post, people who wear a hard mask are in reality extremely fragile. They can’t handle relationships and emotions associated with them. Someone who appears to be very tough and cold on the outside is actually highly vulnerable to emotional injuries. Their poor relationship handling skills and bad man management ensures they are mostly alone in their emotional turmoil, which exacerbates their fear of succumbing to the injury. Hence, this entire facade that these people put around to ensure no personal contact with humans (beyond the bare minimum, like with family and a few close friends), no relationship development, no expectations development and so on and so forth, is to actually protect themselves from getting emotionally injured.

I once told my boss, “Your image in the department (the cross functional sales team driving our huge revenue targets) is of someone who is highly inaccessible and inappropriately demanding. I have had a tough time in the last 2 months mending that image of yours.” The sales team had trouble approaching my boss for discussions and hence the obvious lack of motivation for selling his services.  I told him that even if he needs people to work in an autopilot mode for him, he will have to groom them first, bring them to a certain level and then set expectations right. None of this could happen if he chooses not to interact proactively with them. His reply to all this was, “I want to hold on to that image on purpose. I do not want to be accessible and warm.”

More often than not, the harsher these people appear in their official or public lives, the softer they are in their personal lives. A thought would often cross my mind about my boss, “What sort of a tyrant would he be at home, does he even talk to his kids?” But as I got to know him better, I realized his kids actually take him for a ride (he in fact happily lets them).

What if you are in a relationship with one such ‘pretentious jerk’, who may (and most likely will) have more to him than just his jerkiness.

Go slow and easy on this individual. If he is pre-occupied with something and wants to be left alone, do not try to bog him down with your humanitarian kindliness of sticking around. Accept the fact that he is stubborn and when deeply engaged with or focused on some other task, is more than capable of hurting you. Put more bluntly, the closer you are to this individual, higher are your chances of getting hurt if you try asking too many questions or hanging around when he does not need you (your love and concern will be considered as unsolicited help). These people like to be chased like everyone else but are at their best when you let them chase you. So do not serve yourself on a platter. Let him ask you first. There are good chances he will never ask because of his ego, but he will certainly drop hints. If that does not happen, you drop hints (may be once or twice) that lead him towards asking you what is it that you want or are willing to offer. Yeah, I know it sounds complicated, but that’s because dealing with jerks is difficult and being in love with one is a downright knotty affair.